


Forfeit

by Laylah



Category: Baccano!, D.Gray-man
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Painplay, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:04:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the first of the butterflies land on his shoulders he moans into Tyki's mouth. It's a pain not quite like any he's known before, bright as a burn, focused as a bullet, hungry for his flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forfeit

"What, then?" Luck asks, watching the little flutter of the smoke butterfly's wings in the dim light at the back of the cabaret. "A demon?" Like Maiza's, performing miracles for men who have no interest in being saved.

His drinking partner smiles, sharp-edged in a way that reminds Luck of Vino. "No. I don't think so." The butterfly perches on his fingertips, beats its wings helplessly like it's dying. The pattern on its wings looks like a pair of diamonds. Luck can't look away from it.

He should stop to wonder what this man is doing, slumming in a place like this. He suspects it's to a purpose more sinister than his own. But London is so far from his own territory, his own concerns, that even if the stranger -- he introduced himself as Mick, "Tyki to my friends," and Luck, already drunk, nearly asked if he were carrying scissors -- is looking for crueler vices than he is, he doesn't care.

"I'm out of guesses," Luck says. Tyki's eyes -- surely they must be friends, after the amount they've drunk, the way they've watched each other instead of the dancers of the cabaret -- are more golden than his own, and he'd swear there's a cast of gray to Tyki's face.

Tyki reaches out slowly, bringing the butterfly closer to Luck's face. Tiny threads of darkness flake off it like ash. "You could forfeit," he suggests, "and I would show you."

The butterfly touches his skin and Luck starts, flinches at the sudden, shivering bright pain -- burning, seeking through his veins, spreading outward like Judas' kiss before the elixir that runs in his blood quells it. His heart pounds, and his mouth is dry. Tyki is staring at him in wolfish fascination.

"What would I forfeit?" Luck asks. He blames Keith for teaching him to accept losing, Claire for teaching him to like it when it's inevitable.

"Perhaps less than I expected," Tyki murmurs. "What are _you_?"

Luck shrugs one shoulder, and smiles the way he does when he has a full house that's only jacks high. "Just a man," he says. He watches Tyki do some sleight of hand with his gloved fingers that brings another black butterfly to perch there as though it's been drawn from the smoky air around them. This one is spades, not diamonds. Luck thinks the stakes of this game are probably high, and decides he doesn't care. "A man who might be feeling reckless. The claret is rich for my blood." He reaches out himself this time, and offers his hand palm-up for Tyki's strange little familiar. The pain as it steps delicately into his hand and sinks into his flesh makes his breath catch, makes his fingers curl involuntarily.

"I doubt that," Tyki says. His eyes nearly glow in the dim light. "I bet your blood could handle something a lot stronger than you get here."

"You think so?" Luck asks. It's the offer he's been waiting for, he supposes. There's nobody else in this dive half so fascinating. He thinks of Claire, fearless on a wire fifty feet above the crowd. What does he have to lose? "If you have something to suggest, I'm listening."

Tyki reaches out. "Take my hand," he says.

Luck does, curling his fingers around the softness of kid leather, feeling the strength of bone and tendon beneath. If all of Tyki is like that, lean and hard under the refined finish --

The cabaret flickers and winks out like a candle flame drowning in its own wax, and then other light warms the air around them, enough for Luck to see that they're no place at all, surrounded by a soft golden fog. Butterflies beat their black wings around Tyki's shoulders, dozens of them, and he has a row of tiny crosses running the length of his forehead like a crown of thorns.

"Scared yet?" he asks, and he sounds like they're sharing a joke together.

Luck shakes his head, though he knows he should be. For once the impossible thing is happening to him, not to Claire, not to Firo. "You want someone to be able to endure them," he guesses. Tyki hasn't let go of his hand.

"I guess I must," Tyki says. He pulls Luck closer like they're going to dance -- Luck has heard there are clubs in Munich like that, where men dare to -- Tyki kisses him and he stops thinking about anything happening elsewhere in the world. He can taste blood and gunpowder and claret, and slides his free hand under Tyki's tailored coat, feels hard strength beneath the smooth weave of Tyki's shirt.

When the first of the butterflies land on his shoulders he moans into Tyki's mouth. It's a pain not quite like any he's known before, bright as a burn, focused as a bullet, hungry for his flesh. He shudders and holds on tighter, biting Tyki's lip as the black butterflies torment him, as the elixir soothes the pain away again. He hasn't felt so alive in --

"Gorgeous," Tyki whispers. "Where'd you get a body like that without an innocence to help you out?"

"You're in no position to point fingers," Luck says, his nerves humming, "about other people's lack of innocence."

Tyki laughs like he feels just as good as Luck does, just as high. Perhaps he is. Tonight anything is possible. "You're right," he says. "I should count my blessings." He splays one hand flat against Luck's chest and pushes, and instead of pushing Luck backward he just sinks his hand straight into Luck's body, buried to the wrist behind Luck's rib cage. His cufflink glitters in the soft light.

Luck reaches for Tyki's arm, touching, trying to figure out how that can be possible. He can feel Tyki's flesh, solid and real, to the point where it meets his own, and then nothing. "How," he says. "What -- what have you done?"

"The tease butterflies are only that," Tyki says. "They're a sideshow. This is the main attraction."

"I can't feel it," Luck says. He wonders if this is how men feel with opium in their blood, this strange, the world so mysterious.

Tyki smiles. "Do you want to?" he asks. He licks his lips, his tongue bright pink against the cool gray of his skin. "Can you die?"

"I've done it at least a dozen times," Luck says recklessly. He can feel the flutter of a butterfly -- they do tease, don't they? -- against his cheek, and leans into its sting.

"One more won't hurt you, then," Tyki says, and for one breathtaking second Luck can feel Tyki's fingers stroking his heart, and then it _hurts_ \--

He's on his back when he wakes, and Tyki is stretched out beside him, both hands outside his skin. The butterflies flutter in the mist above them.

"That's a really good trick," Tyki says. He leans in and bites under Luck's jaw, hard, and Luck catches him by the lapels of his coat with both hands to pull him closer. That's an ache Luck has always enjoyed, even back when his shirt collars barely hid the bruises Firo's teeth had left.

"Tyki," Luck says, and his voice comes out smoky, intoxicated, almost as needy as he feels.

"You came to the Metropole looking for a fuck, didn't you?" Tyki growls in his ear. Luck nods, and he can feel Tyki's fingers somehow coaxing his shirt buttons open even with the gloves still on. "Do you mind that it'll be me fucking you?"

"No," Luck says, lips parted like he could taste the crudeness of the suggestion on the air. "I did forfeit, didn't I?"

He helps Tyki pull him out of his clothes, arches into the savage, affectionate bites Tyki scatters across his skin. When he threads his hands into the loose curls of Tyki's hair and pulls, Tyki laughs.

"Come here," he says, and pulls Luck into his lap. He's still dressed, and Luck should complain about that, except that the topcoat is so well tailored to suit him, and the satin lapels are already crushed from Luck's hands. The fabric of his trousers feels rough against Luck's bare thighs.

Luck leans in to take another kiss, to demand it, Tyki's mouth smoky and wet as it opens for his tongue. Tyki's hands spread his thighs, pull him down, and -- he has no idea where the slick came from, can't figure out how it could have happened, but Tyki's cock slides smoothly when he pulls Luck down on it and the burn fades almost too fast.

"When you come," Tyki says as he wraps a gloved hand around Luck's cock, "I want to kill you again."

"Wait until then," Luck says. He has no threats to make; his gun is in the discarded pile of his clothes and he doubts it would do him any good even if he could reach it.

But Tyki nods, and says, "I can be a nice guy, when I try." His hand strokes smoothly, and the glove leather is so soft. The tease butterflies circle them, dropping down to land only one or two at a time, brilliant threads of pain that sing along Luck's nerves for as long as it takes his body to destroy them. They make him writhe, make him push himself down harder on Tyki's cock. He leans close, licks the bare skin of Tyki's throat to taste smoke and sweat and heat, bites when Tyki's solid enough to let him.

The pain's such a distraction -- this whole evening is such a distraction, so unlike what he expected when he walked in the cabaret's doors -- that Luck doesn't realize how close he is until it's almost on top of him, and then he barely has the presence of mind to say, "I'm going to ruin your nice clothes," and Tyki laughs.

"Go ahead," he says, "and good riddance," and lunges for another bite as Luck shivers and arches and spills in his hand.

When Luck can open his eyes again, Tyki's watching him, smile too wide, eyes too bright. "Ready?" he asks.

Luck nods.

The butterflies descend all at once, dozens of them, the pain searing and so bright and so _much_, and Tyki's watching him in something like wonder and then red --

He still aches, his skin tender and thin, when he wakes, and he can taste copper in the back of his throat. Tyki is -- Tyki has changed clothes completely, lounging beside him in a loose shirt and a working man's heavy trousers. Even his skin seems different. The butterflies are nowhere to be seen.

"Did it take me that long?" Luck asks. The thought is troubling.

"Nah, you were pretty quick," Tyki says. He climbs to his feet, oddly graceless, and tosses Luck's clothes at him. The pistol is an awkward weight among folds of cloth. "I was just done with that stuff, for now." He produces a cigarette and matches from his pockets and lights up. "You'd make a pretty good demon yourself, you know? Healing like that. You'd be pretty damn deadly."

"Thank you," Luck says carefully, not at all sure if that's the right response. He dresses quickly, knows he's more disheveled than he'd like to be, but clearly this encounter is over, whatever it was.

"But the thing is --" Tyki takes a hard drag on the cigarette, blows smoke toward the sky, tosses the rest of it away -- "demons are pretty boring, compared to humans. I think." He holds out a hand, and when Luck takes it he pulls; Luck gets to his feet and London fades back into visibility around them in the same moment. They're in the alley behind the Metropole, and the cobblestones are slick underfoot, the evening fog heavy. Tyki grins, lopsided and friendly. The difference is even more marked than the shift from Vino back to Claire. "So don't change, okay?"

Luck smiles helplessly. "I hadn't been planning on it," he says.

Tyki nods. "Good," he says. "See you round."


End file.
